


Killing Time

by pristineungift



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series, Dark Knight Rises (2012), Injustice: Gods Among Us
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Codependency, Drama, F/M, Girls with Guns, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Mutilation, Psychological Horror, Psychopaths In Love, Savior Effect, Self-Mutilation, Sexual Content, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicide Attempt, Survival Horror, Swearing, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-02-08 13:57:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1943772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pristineungift/pseuds/pristineungift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The little lady was screaming, her eyes wide, and frightened, and blue. She was what society said was beautiful: tall and lean and curvy in the right places, white and golden haired and unblemished. If J was honest (and he always was, to himself), he thought she was gorgeous.</p><p>Takes place during <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i>. An origin story for Harley Quinn, as told through Joker’s eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PART I

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bad Jokes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/459632) by [hahaharley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hahaharley/pseuds/hahaharley). 



> **Joker's Characterization:** While I did my utmost to stay true to Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, this story is my take on a Nolanverse version of Harley and Joker's relationship, and as such a flavour of Animated Series Joker seems to have crept in. Since Joker and Harley's relationship originated there, I've decided I'm fine with it. I also give a nod to Jack Nicholson's Joker from time to time.
> 
>  **Harley's Characterization/Appearance:** Harley doesn't have a representative in the Nolanverse, obviously, so I took as much liberty as I felt like. I did try to keep her recognizable as Harley, my primary influence being the way she is depicted in the _Arkham Asylum_ and _Injustice: Gods Among Us_ games, since they give us a grittier, darker character that would fit in with the Nolanverse better than Animated Series Harley. As far as appearance and expression goes, while writing this fic I pictured her being portrayed by actress Jennifer Lawrence.
> 
>  **Special Trigger Warning:** I debated back and forth for a while on whether to include a Rape/Non-Con/Dub-Con warning, and finally settled on the warning/tag you see above and this note. What it boils down to is this: This story is told entirely from the Joker's point of view, and Joker is not a very reliable narrator. He perceives Harley as having clear choices and consenting to sex, and so he tells the story that way. Whether or not Harley actually does is up to the interpretation of each individual reader. Further, it's highly likely that Bad Things happen to Harley off camera when she's not with the Joker. He never speculates on what happens to her when he's not around, so again, what happens to Harley is up to each reader.
> 
>  **Harley and Joker's Relationship:** Let me say from the outset that I do not in any way condone relationships that even remotely resemble the one depicted herein. Harley and Joker's relationship is abusive and destructive and not romantic in the least. However, it is really really interesting, hence the fic.
> 
>  **Quotes:** All lines you recognize are from various Bat-media. Other quotes are either sourced within the text, or footnoted at the end of the chapter.
> 
>  **Special Thanks:** To my husband for beta reading and cheerleading, and to **hahaharley** , whose fic **_Bad Jokes_** directly inspired me to write this one. She did such a good job with a Harley origin story narrated primarily by Harley, that it made me want to see Harleen become Harley all over again, this time through the Joker's eyes. (However, the plot of this fic is in no way related to the _Bad Jokes_ verse.)

 

 

J loved the Gotham news. Best show on television, the most entertaining, the funniest, because on the news they weren't pretending except for how they  _were_ . Here's a senator kissing babies, might make a run for the presidency soon, isn't it  _sweet_ , isn't it good? What a man, what a man, what a  _man_ . Except of course the senator, J knew, was a kiddie fiddler, and he probably got a stiffy from putting his lips on that baby, and no one mentioned it and it was such a  _joke_.

Ha ha hee hoo ha. Ha.

But anyway, not the point. The point was that J liked to watch the news, so he knew when the Bat finally made a reappearance. Eight years without so much as a sighting, eight years since the night J was sent to Arkham and that's just plain  _rude_ , like fucking and running, but worse because fucking and running made sense. Want the pleasure without the mess, that made sense. Batman disappearing? Did. Not. Make. Sense.

But he was back now, so it was all fun, all smiles again, time to play a new game. For the first time in eight years, J started to notice time passing, started to think about breaking out. Without the Bat outside Arkham to tantalize him, he got busy, got distracted, got involved in seeing how far he could push the docs before they cracked like peanut M&Ms between his teeth. (Red and green, the Christmas bags were the best.)

J sat in the TV room eating M&Ms and watching the Bat play with Bane, and he howled and loved it and thought he'd like this Bane fella, seemed like his kind of guy. And Joker saw the flaw now, saw the flaw in his old plan. His bomb just wasn't  _big_  enough! And they said size didn't matter. Naughty, naughty liars.

But Bane's bomb, oh Bane's  _bomb_ , it was huge and it was tearing away the mask, breaking open the scab, making the city bleed, making them all turn on each other, eat each other, and J  _loved_  it.

"Give it to me, baby. Oh yeah. Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me," he muttered under his breath, eyes riveted on the screen.

Martial law was declared, and the Joker giggled and wondered how long it would be before Arkham broke open like an egg.

It wasn't long.

**-l-**

It was the middle of the day when the alarms started blaring and the door to J's cell clunked open, just a crack. He went over and stuck his head into the hall, looking around. "Uh, hi?"

No one was there, and then suddenly everyone was. Guys in orange jumpsuits ran all over the place, shoes squeaking on the shiny wax floors. (J liked the squeak. Sometimes he made people bleed just so they'd have to wax the floors again.) Doc Scarecrow, the only decent doc in the place, was cackling and wearing his mask - except, Joker knew, the mask wasn't a mask, it was  _his face_ , and the human features under it were the disguise.

Sidestepping the orderlies and guards frantically trying to contain the inmates, J put his hands in his pockets and strolled out of Arkham's front gates, whistling a merry tune. Couldn't remember where he'd heard it, though.

Oh well. Didn't matter.

Nothing did.

**-l-**

He spent that first day of freedom ditching his prison clothes and making himself feel like  _himself_ again. Killed some guy with the right build and took his suit and his shoes. Not quite right, not really, but not half bad. Black jacket and pants, blue shirt, darker blue tie patterned in little white diamonds. Stepping over the corpse, J went into the guy's bathroom, checked himself out in the mirror. His hair was shorter. The Arkham docs kept it short, kept him from looking like  _him_ , reckoned that if he looked more  _normal_ , like they thought he should, that maybe he would start acting like they thought he should too. Would start lying to make the world prettier, just like they did.

J hated liars. He lied to anyone and everyone, but it was only because they lied  _first_.

"Hey, good lookin'," he said to his reflection, then chuckled. The docs could give him all the haircuts they wanted, could refuse to give him his grease paint ( _war paint_ ), but the scars were always there. J would never be good lookin'. But that was fine because the scars were  _true_ , they were  _his truth_ , written on his face for all the world to see, and every time someone recoiled or stared or glanced out of the corners of their vision, he knew just that much more about the liars around him.

There was hair gel on the bathroom counter, so J slicked back his hair. Better. Still not him, but it wouldn't do to attract the Bat's attention too soon, now would it? J needed to get the lay of the land, get his feet under him, and he didn't want to disrupt Bane's little game. Not when it was so much fun to watch.

He wondered who had the bomb's trigger. He hoped it was a mother. Mothers were more vicious than every other breed of human. J knew that from experience.

**-l-**

He was wandering the streets, not sure what turf he wanted to claim as his own little kingdom yet, when he heard the scream. It was high pitched and horrified, a woman's wail of terror. He went toward the sound, because why not? Might be fun.

He rounded the corner, his new shoes reflecting sunlight, and he smiled because muggings in broad daylight, now this was  _true_. No more man behind the curtain, slinking in the shadows. Just out and out brutality, the world as it really was.

It was a dead end alley, the best kind, or the worst, depending on your perspective, and there were three big thugs standing in a semicircle around a little lady. There was a fourth guy, but he was on the ground, his guts spilling out, so J didn't think he counted. Not anymore. Not ever.

The little lady was screaming, her eyes wide, and frightened, and blue. She was what society said was beautiful: tall and lean and curvy in the right places, white and golden haired and unblemished. If J was honest (and he always was, to himself), he thought she was gorgeous, and he knew what these men wanted with her. Whether she'd be alive afterwards was anyone's guess.

The best part, the best part of all, was that none of these men were crooks. Oh, they were  _crooked_ , but they weren't  _crooks_. Not an orange jumpsuit to be seen, not a single jailhouse tat. These were, hmm. College frat boys. College frat boys. Maybe they made a habit of date raping co-eds, dressing it up as  _it was fine, she wanted it, she shouldn't have come out drinking if she didn't_. Maybe now, now that they didn't have to lie, didn't have to pretty it up anymore, they just roamed the city in a little pack, taking the women they wanted.

Whatever.

College frat boys gang raping women and killing their boyfriends with a kitchen knife and a baseball bat. How boring. How unimaginitive. Plain, ordinary, everyday evil. Gotham deserved  _more_.

Except. Oh, the third one had a switchblade. And Joker wanted it. He  _wanted_  it.

He went into the alley.

"Hey, hey," he said. The college frat boys turned, brandishing their weapons. "Gimme the knife," he said, holding his hand out for the switchblade. It glinted, winking at Joker.

"Get your own," the boy with the baseball bat said, trying for menacing. Joker thought the boy meant the knife, and then he laughed because he realized the boy meant the woman. Ha, ha, ha, hee. It was  _funny_.

"Gimme the knife, gimme the knife, I want the knife, I want the knife,  _give it_  to me," he pestered between giggles, wiggling his fingers toward the boy with the switchblade.

The three exchanged a look. They didn't seem to notice the little blonde woman, the little terrified  _angel_  backing away, folding herself into a corner, trying to make herself small. Baseball Bat (Ha  _ha_! Baseball  _Bat_ ) sneered at Joker. "Crazy ugly ass freak."

Well. That was just  _mean_.

Joker tilted his head, smoothing his hands through his slicked back hair. "Do you want to play tag?" he asked the Baseball Bat.

"Huh?"

Joker darted forward, kicking out at Baseball Bat's knees. Had to take him out first, the bat had the longest reach, was the most immediate danger. Baseball Bat went down hard, his head thudding on the concrete, his grip on his weapon loosening as he reacted to the pain. Really.  _Amateurs_.

Joker grabbed up the bat and came out swinging. "Tag! You're it!"

He caught Kitchen Knife around the ears, and then got Switchblade on the backswing. They were standing too close together. Idiots. (Gotham really deserved better.) Kitchen Knife went down, and Joker took the opportunity to stomp on his nuts, just to make sure he stayed there for a while. Switchblade was shaking his head to clear it, like  _that_  would work, and holding his jaw, but he was still on his feet and he still had the knife Joker wanted in his right hand. Joker swung low, going for the knees. That always worked. Few people realized how important their knees were until they couldn't use them.

Bone splintered and Joker smiled, watching Switchblade drop his knife and scream. Joker picked up the discarded knife (it was beauteous, oh yes it was) and cut Switchblade's throat from ear to ear. Then he did it to Kitchen Knife and Baseball Bat just for thoroughness' sake, and because it was pretty. Made their throats look like they were smiling.

J liked his new knife.

The little woman came flying down the alley, and J barely paid her any attention. He stepped to the side, assuming she'd run past him, fleeing to quail another day, or whatever. He didn't really care.

He was so shocked when she flung her arms around him that he almost knifed her.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," she chanted into the skin of his neck, and that was just. Huh.

"Shshshshs, shushshushshush. Shush," he told her, stroking her hair. He didn't realize that she wasn't crying until after he'd shushed her. She was supposed to be crying. It was what people did.

She wasn't crying, but she was trembling, little shakes that vibrated against J in the most delicious ways. She was soft and hard all at the same time, strong, compact muscles leavened with breast and ass. Her hair was soft too. It had been a long time since J had been near a woman who didn't smell like medicine and blood. (Oh there was blood, but it was from his hands. He was getting it in her hair. She didn't seem to mind.)

She smelled like peaches.

J wiped the switchblade off on his pant leg and pocketed it. Then he pulled the woman closer, figuring he might as well enjoy it if she was going to cling to him like a monkey. He was (incidentally, not intentionally) her hero. Maybe this was what it was like to be Bats.

Weird.

"They killed Jimmy," she said. Her voice was soft, her vowels rolling, purring with the thickness of a city accent. J wanted to bite her tongue.

He looked at the flesh pile that was probably Jimmy, the little punk who'd been dead when J arrived.

J raised a brow. "Boyfriend?"

The woman shook her head, her hair tickling his chin. "Neighbor," she said in that sweet little voice. "Said that it'd be better if we stuck together once. You know. Everything. The bomb."

"Yeah."

Jimmy probably thought this was his ticket to that hot body. Protect the lady, stick together, and soon he'd be sticking it  _to_  her.

Wasn't a bad plan, if you liked them willing. (Which J did. It was a  _novelty_ , what with his face and all. And he didn't bother with unwilling. He always forgot what he was doing before he got to the actual fucking part and killed them. Oops.)

"Well, uh." J tried to pull away, but the woman wasn't letting go. He thought about hitting her. "Go away now," he told her. "Shoo."

She giggled, and well that was, that  _was_.

She looked up at his face, and her grin froze, her eyes fixed on, oh right, of course.

"It's the scars, huh? Wanna know how I got 'em?" Joker skimmed a hand down her back, his fingers on the way to the switchblade in his pocket. Maybe he'd cut her up a little, give her some scars of her own to stare at.

The woman shook her head.

J blinked. No one ever said  _no_. They always wanted to know, always wanted a story, wanted an  _explanation_ , a way they could make him fit in a box, something they could blame. "You  _don't_ wanna know how I got these scars?" he asked, just to be sure. She might be stupid, you never knew.

Those blue eyes were wide, wide, wide, staring through him. Did she recognize him? Remember him from the news? He used to be quite the entertainer, even if he hadn't been on the air in a while.

"It doesn't matter how you got 'em," she said, and her hands traveled up in jerks and halts, like scared rabbits, until her palms rested on his cheeks. She stroked her thumbs over the scars, one on each side of his mouth, and he shivered. Damn.  _Goddamn_.

Finally, someone who understood, who  _saw_. Someone who knew it didn't matter. Wasn't looking for a story, wasn't looking for a reason, just saw that the scars were there, saw his face, and  _accepted it_. J smiled for her, and her brow furrowed, her fingertips traveling over the scars again, exploring the changed contours.

"I'm cold," she blurted.

J leaned away, wrapping his hands around her wrists. Her pulse was rapid, thrumming against his fingers, and her breath was coming in shallow little pants, interspersed with periods where she seemed to stop breathing altogether. Shock, he decided. (He was so smart, he coulda been a doc, if it wasn't so  _boring_.)

He stepped away from the woman, and she let herself be pried off this time, though she wouldn't stay further than a few steps from him. J stripped his suit jacket off and draped it around her shoulders. She put her arms through the sleeves and hugged it to herself, turning her nose into the collar and breathing deep, like she needed his scent inside her, like she needed  _him_  inside her.

She looked like a little doll. A little porcelain doll, and oh how he'd love to see that porcelain crack, see if she was empty air on the inside.

He was starting to get hard, twitching inside his pants. She didn't seem to notice. But right now she wasn't noticing much, wasn't doing anything but gazing at his face like it was the best thing she'd ever seen.

"So, dollface, where do you live?" He needed to get her warm, make her drink something, or she might die or what have you, and that would just be disappointing.

She frowned, her eyes unfocused. "You gonna kill me?" she asked him. Straightforward. He liked that.

He thought for a minute. This woman deserved the truth, precisely because she hadn't asked him for any lies. He thought, if she asked, he'd even tell her the real story about the scars. Being brave enough to see the world as it was deserved a reward, after all.

"Nah, won't kill ya," he promised. "Don't worry. I'm a man of my word."

He snickered, wondering again if she knew, if she guessed. It would be fun to see how many hints he could give her before she figured it out. If she didn't already know. Who knew what she'd do? Jokes he didn't know the punchline to were the best kind.

He looked at the dead men in the alley. He'd never do this to the woman now. Pity. He'd promised though, and his promises, they  _meant_ something. He could do anything in the world to this woman, but he would never, ever kill her, even if she wanted him to.

Maybe he'd try to make her want him to. That could be fun.  _Irony._

Back to the dead men. J searched them for anything useful. Nothing so petty as cash. Cash didn't matter when you just took what you wanted. Like his sweet new blade.

None of them had anything interesting. J took the kitchen knife, because why not, and then debated a few minutes before handing the baseball bat to the woman.

"Hey, hey, hey," he jiggled it in front of her when she didn't seem to realize what he wanted. "Take this. We get jumped, uh, aim for the head and the nuts. Head confuses the victim, nuts incapacitates.  _Don't hit me_."

She was unfazed by the warning in his tone. Shock. Well, she'd better remember what he said anyway. Her hands closed around the bat, her grip lax. J decided it was good enough, he'd work on her when she wasn't shaking, when she was more  _with it_. He hoped she'd quit it soon, he didn't want to get bored with her.

He stalked out of the alley, and she followed him, just like he thought she would.

"Hey, um," she called, her feet going pitter patter as she caught up. "What's your name, Mister…?"

"J," he said, without thinking about it. It wasn't his  _name_ , but it was a nickname, even if he was the only one who'd ever used it, and then only in the quiet of his mind. But whatever, she could use it. Didn't matter.

"Mister J," she repeated. "Okay. I'm Harleen."

J scoffed. "No. Nope. Don't like it. Doesn't suit you."

She shrugged, and J spun on his heel, pulling her into him, one arm locked around her waist and the other hand grasping at her chin. He turned her face this way and that, her cheeks squished between his fingers, and she let him, her pink tongue coming out to flick at the corner of her mouth. J mirrored the action, tonguing at his scars.

Harleen. Lena. Leni. Harl. Arli. Harli.

"Harley, Harley,  _Harley_ ," Joker moaned out, shaping his lips around the syllables.

"Yeah, Mister J?" she asked. And oh, good girl, good dolly, she already knew her name. Harley. Much better than Harleen. Perfect, even.

"Take me home, Harley."


	2. PART II

Harley lived in a middling neighborhood. Not on the good side of town, not on the bad side either. Neat. Middle class. (Class. Ha!) Two weeks since martial law had been declared, and these streets were still clean, the buildings still mostly untouched, all the shiny happy people peering out between their flower print curtains.

Harley led him to a block of townhouses and buzzed them through the neighborhood security gate. She lived in 13B. Timmy (or was it Jimmy? He didn't care) had been next door in 13A.

Harley's knees buckled on the porch steps, and J tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, rolling his eyes. She was really milking this shock thing. He liked that about her.

Fishing her keys out of her jeans pocket, he got the door open and surveyed his new domain.

There was a squashy couch, red leather, dominating the main room. J dumped Harley on it immediately, then prowled around, touching things, opening drawers. Harley watched him, never let him out of her sight, but she made no move to stop him.

There was a pretty standard entertainment center, particle board, with a flat screen TV. It was on the smallish side. Bookshelves (more particle board) everywhere, filled with fiction and DVDs and video games, and what looked like college textbooks. Psychology, well well. His little doll was smart, and that was good, he hated stupid people. Stupid liars.

There were trophies on the shelf by the staircase, little statues of gold plastic engraved with the name  _Harleen Quinzel_ , and a medal too. Even a picture of a younger (but not much) and thinner (read: less busty) Harley standing on a balance beam.

So she was  _flexible_. Good to know.

J trundled into the kitchen and made an inspection there. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing interesting except for the weed hidden in the spice rack, but hey, college kids, right? He started the coffee maker and pocketed a steak knife.

"So here's the thing," he said, going back into the living room. Harley jolted at the sound of his voice, but he thought she was startled rather than afraid. And wasn't that  _in-ter-est-ing_?

He sat down on the squashy red couch, right next to Harley, and decided not to put his arm around her. Let it be her choice whether she stayed close, just to see what she'd do.

She stayed put.

"People," J went on, making a face, wrinkling his nose, "people are not very nice. And, em, now they're not pretending. Not anymore. The beauty of it is, I,  _I_  am less nice than most, and I at least never lie about it. And you, Harley, you are the kind of pretty little girl that bad men love to  _ruin_."

She blinked at him, her face pale, but those blue eyes were focused, and she was smart, he  _knew_  that she was smart, she'd see the sense in his proposal, and hell, she might even be playing possum. Those sharp eyes didn't quite fit the rest of the doll.

"So! So,  _so_ , so, what we do is, we stay together. The city's not getting any nicer, only been what, a few weeks? Soon, you'll need me. You'll nee _ **d**_  me, a guard dog, a  _mad_  dog to keep the bad men away. And I? Well, I want what any dog wants. Food in my belly and to be  _scratched_  every once in a while."

He clapped his hands, then spread his arms.  _Whaddaya say?_

Harley stared, and she was shaking again, and really, she needed to get over this shock soon. "Don't pretty it up," she said in that honey city voice. "No euphemisms. Say it like it is."

J tossed his head back and laughed with joy, because, good garly Miss Harley, he liked her, he  _liked_  her.

She smiled at him, a tentative thing, like a bird beating its wings in his hand, and he cupped her cheeks, only then noticing that blood had dried on his fingers, lines of white showing at the joints where the crust of it had cracked. J put his forehead against hers, sharing her breath, his tongue darting out to catch at his scars and brushing over her lips. She froze.

"Here's how it is, Harley. You, uh, fuck me whenever, whenever I want. I kill anyone else who looks at you wrong. I get food, you cook it. You take care of me, I take care of you. Partners, yeah?"

Harley's breath was speeding up again. She might faint soon, if she didn't stop that gasping. Was it fear? Was she horny? Both?

Neither?

J put an arm around her, and she burrowed into his side, hands flexing in the material of his shirt, wrinkling it, mussing it, marring it just like he wanted to mar her, mark her skin.

"You're a killer aren't you?" Harley said into his chest. "I mean, before everything went to hell. You were already a killer."

Joker smiled. "It was always hell, doll. You can just see the demons better now."

Her hands clenched in his shirt, her dull nails scraping over his skin. He let her think, let her have the moment. Wouldn't do to rush her into something she'd regret, especially since he couldn't kill her if she got annoying. He could always ditch her, he supposed, but then he'd be bored while he waited for Bane and Batsy to finish their game. (Batman would pull something out of his cape at the last minute, Joker had no doubt of that. It was what Batman  _did_.)

Harley shifted, sitting back to look J in the face. He turned his head from side to side and waggled his brows, giving her the opportunity to study him as he had her.

"Yeah, okay," she said at last. "I guess whatever happened before doesn't matter. We'll all be blown to kingdom come soon anyway."

J laughed at that, and Harley laughed with him, her little giggles spiraling into full blown hysterics soon enough.

It was beautiful.

**-l-**

They slept on the squashy couch. Harley fell asleep after J made her drink a cup of coffee, and he elected to stay with her. He didn't want her running off, so he stretched out next to her on the outside edge of the cushions, one arm and leg flung over her, guaranteeing he'd wake up if she tried to make a break for it.

He fell asleep to Harley's whuffing breaths against his neck, her trembling stopped at last, and he woke to fingers in his hair.

Harley was propped up on one elbow, stroking her hand over his scalp. "Hey," she said when she saw he was awake. "Sorry."

She dropped her hand, scooting away from him as much as the couch would allow, which wasn't very much. At all.

J turned onto his side, pressing his dick into her thigh. It was soft now, but it wouldn't be for long. "Keep going," he demanded.

Harley put her hand back in his hair and sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. She was nervous. J didn't want her to be. Nervous was boring. Everyone was nervous, afraid of him. Everyone except the Bat, and he couldn't see the Bat volunteering to blow him any time soon, so.

Harley needed to not be afraid of him. Right now.

He stroked her back and nuzzled his face into her breasts, humming a little tune. (Couldn't remember what tune it was. Didn't matter.)

Harley wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rocked him, and he let her. Let her be gentle, let her  _coddle_  him. It wasn't exactly  _comfortable_ , this soft touching, all this touching, any touching that didn't end in blood, but it wasn't uncomfortable either. Made his skin crawl, yeah, but it wouldn't do to get too used to the shape he was in, because that was when the world came along and  _changed_  it.

He started thrusting his hips against her thigh, and she stiffened, then let out a long breath.

"Hey," he whispered in her ear. "Hey, don't be scared. Don't be afraid of me.  _Don't_. Uh, okay?"

"I'll try," she whispered back, no lies about not being scared, because of course she was and Harley was a  _truth-teller_.

J rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. He wanted to watch her, wanted her to be the one riding him, the one to do the work. The whores he'd had in the old days had preferred doggy style, so that they wouldn't have to look at his face. Oh they'd play it up, dress it up nice to keep him happy, talk about how he was too  _big_  to take any other way, but he knew the  _truth_. They were disgusted by him.

Not his Harley though. She kept those baby blues fastened on his mouth the whole time. And when she finally leaned down to kiss him, running her tongue over the scars, he could almost believe that she liked them.

She didn't say so, though, and that was good. J didn't know if he could really believe her yet, and he didn't want her to start lying now, not when she'd been doing so well.

**-l-**

"What was a sweet thing like you doing out so close to the Narrows?" he asked later, speaking more to himself than Harley.

He was playing solitaire on the low coffee table, killing time waiting for dark, and Harley was painting her toenails. She was across from him, on the sofa, her foot braced on the coffee table. She wasn't wearing anything but his shirt, and every time she bent to reach one of those little piggies, J got a flash of the light brown curls between her thighs. She was tantalizing him. Her body was the only weapon she had against him, as far as she knew (as far as he knew too), and she was working it.

"You're a sweet thing too, ya know," she said instead of answering his question. "Holding me while I sleep, making me coffee, carrying me over the threshold." She batted her eyes at him, and J snorted. "You could make a girl fall in love with you that way."

Had he mentioned that he liked Harley?

"Love," he pouted his lips, tongue darting out to touch at his scars. "You love me, Harley?"

"That would be telling, Mister J."

J cut his eyes at her. She was grinning. "I like you," he muttered, running a hand through his hair.

Harley rolled her eyes. "You don't have to sound so surprised."

"Even when it's, uh, surprising?"

"Hey!" Harley shouted over the sound of his laughter. Her  _face._ "I'm very likable you know!"

"Oh I know, Har _ley_." He sucked his teeth. "You're very likable. And lickable too. That's why you need me."

Abandoning his playing cards, J leaned over the coffee table and licked Harley's leg from ankle to knee. She shrieked, and he tensed to backhand her for  _daring_ , having the  _gall_  to be afraid of him after he'd told her not to be… But then the shriek turned to laughter and he relaxed. She wasn't afraid. She was ticklish.

Her flailing leg knocked over the bottle of nail polish (red) and J put his fingers in it, smearing it around the coffee table, and then drawing a smiley face on the top of Harley's foot. So pretty. His hand itched for his knife. He should carve the smiley there, making a matching face on the other foot, this time in blood. Would Harley be afraid of him then? She better not be.

She saw the knife come out, and she went completely still, her face going pale.

"Mister J?" she said in her sweet, soft voice.

He put the point of the knife to her skin. "Don't move."

"J?"

He pressed the point down and watched that first beautiful drop of crimson well up.

"J!" She swatted at his hand, and now she was pissed, and wasn't that just, wasn't that just  _adorable_? Ha hee hoo. Ha. Ha. Hee. Ha.

"You said you wouldn't hurt me!" She raged at him, her face going from white to red, those blue eyes like flint, like gun barrels.

" _Wrong!_ " Joker snarled, voice deep and dangerous, rough with a growl. He tightened his grip on her ankle, hard enough to grind the bones together. Harley tensed, and Joker smiled at her, repeating in a more conversational tone, "Wrong. Said I wouldn't kill you, dollface. Never said anything about not, uh, hur _ **t**_ ing you."

He clicked his teeth around his consonants, tongue darting out to taste the air, like a snake. It tasted like… bitterness.

"Oh," Harley said after a long silence in which they stared each other down, Joker watching as this lie, this  _lie_  that Harley had told herself was stripped away. She was doing so well, but lying to yourself was the easiest. Joker should know, even if he didn't do it anymore.

"Yeah. Oh."

Joker waited for the screaming, the crying, the begging, the redundancy of Harley turning out to be like every. one. else.

She took a deep breath, firming her jaw, her gaze flickering all over the room before coming to rest on him again. "Well if you're set on carving me up, at least sterilize the knife first. I won't be fun to fuck with my leg rotting from infection. And do it somewhere less bony, please, Mister J. I need to be able to move, to run if you tell me."

What.

J's mouth fell open, and Harley was  _grinning_  at him, her face tight and eyes bright and ha ha ha hee hoo hee ha he ha hehehe ha.

"Harley.  _Doll._ " He let her ankle go, and then he lunged forward and kissed her, turning to rub his cheeks against hers, his scars against her face. He liked the way it felt.

"Wanna watch a movie?" Harley chirped at him. "No idea how long the electricity's going to last. Might as well enjoy it while we have it." She held her breath.

J shrugged and put his knife away. "Yeah okay."

Harley put on  _V for Vendetta_  and they snuggled on the squashy couch, Harley half slung across his lap. The way she so trustingly rested against him, her skin warm and her breathing steady, was oddly soothing. He'd never had a pet before. Not that he remembered.

He watched the movie and Harley watched him, and he knew that, to her, (and to him too, a little), the movie was about them.

"I'm Joker," he said, when the end credits rolled. "I'm Joker, I'm, I'm Joker. I'm Joker."

No point not saying it.

"I know, Mister J," Harley mumbled, rubbing her cheek against his bare chest.


	3. PART III

Night came and the streets got dark, a thief's best friend. All the good little boys and girls would be curled up in the holes where they were hiding, and if they heard something go bumpity bump, well they best not check, it's fine, it's probably just a dog. (Ha!)

"Stay here," he told Harley before he went out. "Don't let anyone, ah, else in."

He probably didn't need to tell her. She was smart, his Harley. But it didn't hurt to make the rules clear, so that she could decide whether or not to break them. (That was the thing, before you broke rules, for it to really  _count_ , for you to really  _mean_  it, you had to know the rules,  _all_ the rules.)

"Hold on," Harley said. "I have a list."

She jogged up the stairs (there was just a single loft bedroom up there, with a bed, a dresser, and not much else. J liked the living room better) and he considered leaving before she came back down. But no. Harley paid more attention than he did to things like meals and medicine, and he was a survivor when it came down to it, so he'd take her little list and make an effort to get the things that were important, the things that amused him.

Harley skipped lightly down the stairs, brandishing a piece of notebook paper at him. "This is what I was doing in the Narrows. Jimmy." She faltered, gulping for air. J raised his eyebrows at her.  _Really?_

Harley glared at him. "J-jimmy thought that most people would be staying away from the Narrows, so we'd find more stuff there. And he thought it'd be safer during the day."

J rolled his eyes. "Jimmy was an idiot."

"Yeah," Harley agreed. "And now he's dead so I guess. Yeah."

J took the list and looked it over. Harley had pretty, girly, loopy handwriting that was just a little  _warped_ , just a little outside the lines, and J smiled as he read it. At the bottom of the list, in a different colored ink than the rest, she'd added  _More clothes for Mister J_  and  _Condoms_.

He looked up and smirked, and Harley smirked back, twitching her eyebrows up. "How long you gonna be gone, J?"

Joker frowned at her.

"Uh, so I can have dinner ready when you get back?" Harley went on, her voice pitched high and breathy.

Oh, well. That was rea-son-a-ble.

"Three days," he said. He'd need time to get weapons and wheels, time to assemble a crew, and time to dump the bodies afterwards. And he wanted to make sure not to lead anyone back to his little Harley-pie. Wouldn't do to have anyone crack that porcelain skin, no it. Would. Not.

Harley looked like she might protest being alone that long, but then she shut her mouth and heh, hee, ha, she was  _smart_ , his Harley.

"Don't I get a goodbye kiss?" she purred to him, pressing close and rubbing her nose against his. "Hmm, puddin'?"

He snorted so hard he coughed, and Harley laughed at him, and he pulled her hair, and she  _liked_  it.

"Puddin' puddin' puddin'," she chanted, and he rolled his eyes. Then he kissed her, shoving his tongue in her mouth to shut her up.

She bit his tongue.

He moaned, but he didn't have time for this, not right now, so he pushed her away, smoothing at his hair, the lingering taste of peaches and blood in his mouth. (He was hard again and he briefly debated bending Harley over the stair rail and fucking her in the ass, that would show her, but no, he didn't have time.)

"See ya in three days,  _puddin_ '," she called out when he turned to the door, and she was going to keep calling him that just because it annoyed him. He could tell.

Had he mentioned that he liked Harley?

**-l-**

Joker used his three days well. Got all the little things on Harley's list - she wanted food, and fuel, and medicine, a generator, and a car, matches and bullets and bandages, she was a  _survivor_ , his Harley. He got himself new threads, not the signature look, oh no, but nice, soft, stylish. Word on the street was that the Bat was dead, but Joker didn't believe it. Bane was too good, he saw too  _clearly_  to kill the Bat. He probably had him locked up somewhere, making him watch. Joker tilted his head back and smiled for the camera.

He wore a ski mask when he put his crew together, pulled off his heists. It was a little more challenging without the fear factor, without the weight of his name to make the thugs fall in line, but he managed. He man-an-an-an-aged. He even pulled a wedding set off a dead woman's finger. It was the sort of pretty lie that people who weren't Harley-pie would believe, and the rock would hurt like hell if he taught her to throw a decent punch.

He kept one of the guys in the truck with him when he took the haul back to Harley. He'd need the help unloading, and while his Harley was a strong little thing, it'd be faster this way. The guy thought that he was getting to stay with Joker, share the spoils. That was a laugh.

He waited 'til dark, wouldn't do to tempt the neighbors, and then he parked the truck and took the guy with him into the house.

Harley wasn't in the living room, but Joker could hear her moving around the kitchen. One of her psychology textbooks was sitting out on the coffee table, open to a passage on personality disorders. Joker couldn't decide if she hadn't expected him back yet, or had left it out purposefully for him to see. (Always a surprise, his Harley.)

"Mister J? That you?"

Joker didn't answer. Instead he gestured for the guy, Mr.-Thinks-He's-Getting-A-Share, to go into the kitchen. Just for shits and giggles.

He thought maybe there would be a crash and a scream, and Harley rabbiting out the door to hide behind his coattails. But that wasn't what happened. There was a crash and a scream all right, but the crash was Harley walloping Mr. Thinks with her baseball bat as he went through the kitchen door, and the scream was Mr. Thinks yelping as he went down.

Joker burst into a gale of uproarious laughter. She was a survivor, his Harley!

"Harley, Harley, Harley-pie," he giggled, pulling off his ski mask and smoothing his hair. "Daddy's so p _ **r**_ _o_ _ **u**_ d." He stalked over to Mr. Thinks, nudging him with a boot. Mr. Thinks was still alive, so he'd still be able to unpack the truck. Good.

"Bu _ **t**_ ," Joker tsked, wagging a finger at Harley. "You didn't go for the head or the nuts. Remember what I told you, huh?"

He looked up to see Harley framed in the doorway, clutching the baseball bat so hard that her knuckles were white. She opened her mouth, giving a little angry huff, and then swallowed down whatever she was going to say. Finally, she lowered her eyes. "Sorry, Mister J. I'll do better next time."

"Yeah. You will. Catch."

Harley dropped the bat with an aluminum thunk, and J tossed the wedding set at her. She caught both rings, to his surprise. (So deliciously unpredictable, his Harley.)

Looking down at the rings in her hands, she stared, and then arched a brow, giving him a look.  _You can't be serious._

"Yeeaaaahhh," he said, and made a face at her.

She laughed. "Does this make me Missus J?"

J shrugged. "Makes us whatever it's the most fun to be, doll."

Mr. Thinks chose that moment to get his shit together. "Whu-uh, yer the Joker!" he exclaimed, pointing.

Harley leaned down and looked him in the face, a sweet smile on her lips that was just  _peachy keen_  and a vicious look in her eye. "Duh!"

**-l-**

J had Mr. Thinks beat a hole in the connecting wall between 13A and 13B with a sledgehammer so that he and Harls would have a way in and out of Dead Jimmy's place without going outside. (It would be a good bolthole, a good hiding place that the neighbors didn't know they had access to.) Then they unloaded the truck, Harley sorting and putting things away as they were brought in.

When the operation was done, Joker killed Mr. Thinks and buried him in Dead Jimmy's basement. Good thing he picked up that lye!


	4. PART IV

Things settled into an unpredictable routine in Harleyland. They fucked. They ate. They watched DVDs and played cards. They never did any of these things at any set time of day or night. Sometimes they had breakfast at noon, or dinner at three in the morning. Sometimes they fucked for so long that Harley had to beg for water breaks, and sometimes J didn't touch her for days. (The days of inattention seemed to make her nervous. More often than not, they were ended with her throwing herself at him.)

Sometimes J took her with him on his little trips, and sometimes (most of the time) he left her in the house by herself.

Some nights he took her to the roof of a skyscraper, so they could watch the city burn.

"What are we doing up here, J?"

"Shshshsh," he shushed her, turning on the police scanner he'd brought with them. It was like dinner theatre, the best show in town, watching the fighting in the streets and hearing the warring factions scheme. "Killing time, Harley-pie. We're, uh, killing time together, you and I."

"'Til what? The bomb goes off? The end of the world?"

"Shshshshsh."

**-l-**

Around the sixth week after J followed Harley home (like a  _dog_ , woof!), Harley ran away (like a dog,  _woof_!).

J didn't notice at first. He'd been out, organizing the crew, the  _boys_ , sending them to fight out boundary lines. The Catwoman (Cats, Bats, and Clowns, oh  _my_ ) had claimed a neighborhood for herself, and J wasn't about to be outdone. The point was, the  _point_  was he'd been out, and he flung himself down on the squashy red couch as soon as he got back, so he wasn't sure if Harley'd left while he was gone, or if she slipped out the day after he returned.

He realized she was missing when he got hungry enough for it to distract him from his work. He'd gotten used to certain little  _creature_  comforts since taking up with Harley. She brought him food regularly, leaving it near enough that he'd mechanically consume it if he wasn't of a mind to stop whatever he was doing.

"Har _ley_!" he screamed, then cocked his head, waiting for the sound of her little feet as she came running.

Silence.

Grumbling to himself, he got up to look for her. She wasn't downstairs, or upstairs, or in Dead Jimmy's place. She'd broken the  _rule_ , the rule that she wasn't to go outside without him, and she  _knew_  it, she  _meant_  it, and Joker didn't know if he was pissed or proud.

He smiled and went to plot out her punishment. She'd be back. There was no way she'd leave him  _now_. She  _needed_  him. She was  _his_. If she didn't come back, it was because she'd got herself killed, and Joker didn't even consider  _that_  because that wouldn't be any fun  _at all_.

**-l-**

Sure enough, two days later (or was it four? Seven? Whatever, didn't matter) Harley came limping up the porch steps. Her clothes were torn, her hair tangled, and one of her shoes was missing. Her bare foot was swollen and purple, and she had scratches on her arms. There was blood on her lips and bruises on her face, and when he opened the door and glared at her she looked at him like he was the best thing she'd ever seen.

Well  _well_ , looked like the world had been rough on his little doll. Hadn't he warned her? Told her the  _truth_?

"Mister J," she hiccuped, holding out her arms. "Wanna know how I got these scars?"

He laughed, and she fainted, pitching forward. J caught her and carried her into the bathroom, dropping her into the tub without care to her injuries and turning the shower on full blast. The cold water shocked her awake, sputtering. She looked around wildly, water mixing with tears, and when she saw him she started to sob. "Mister J," she hiccuped, rocking backwards and forwards. "Mister J,  _Mister J_ , Mister J, stay, let me  _stay_ , Mister J,  _stay, stay_ , Mister J."

Wrinkling his nose, J turned to go. He'd deal with her when she was doing being so.  _So_.

Quick as a striking snake (and a good deal stronger), she latched onto his arm, her nails digging down between the bones of his wrist. "J, J, J, J, stay, stay, stay," she chattered, imploring him with those baby blues. " _Please_."

J blinked, raising his eyebrows. "Well, all you had to do was ask nicely."

Fully clothed, he got into the shower with Harley, turning the taps to adjust the temperature of the water. Harley wrapped herself around him like an octopus. He rolled his eyes and let his head thunk back against the tiles. The things he did for…the hell of it.

**-l-**

Harley made the best bait. She really, really did. Put her in a little pair of shorts and a shirt that clung to those sweet peach  _tits_  and she was catnip. Or  _cop_ nip, as the case may be, hehehe, ha, hoo, ha.

J waited in the shadows of a warehouse, his ear pressed to the metal of the door. He could hear Harley's little dolly laugh and the sound of booted footsteps.

"This your place, baby?" a masculine voice asked.

"Yeah. But before we go in, you got something to trade? Food? Matches?"

"You gonna make me pay for it? Really?"

"If you're good at something," Harley said softly, "never do it for free."

A thunk, and the metal door of the warehouse rattled. "Girl like you's too pretty to be hooking."

"...Yeah, okay, fine. You don't have to pay. Let's just go in, alright? I'm not doing this in the middle of the street."

J backed away from the door, and it opened to reveal Harley and one of the few Gotham cops who wasn't trapped in the sewers. Harley looked mad and the cop had his hand around Harley's arm, holding her so tight that the skin was red. It might even bruise, and that just, that just  _wouldn't do_.

Joker burst out of his hiding place, driving a knife into the front of the cop's shoulder with one hand and pulling the cop's gun out of its holster with the other. The cop screamed and flung Harley to the side. She squeaked and fell, stumbling into a crate.

"What the fuck?! I mean, what the actual fuck?!" The cop hissed and spat. "You her pimp or something?! Bitch!"

The guy dove for Harley again, and  _oh really?_  Wife beater, must be, ignoring Joker to go after the little lady. As Joker watched, the guy got a grip on one of Harley's legs, just above the ankle. Harley tried to get away, but the guy was too strong. Twisting onto her back, she cocked her free leg and kicked the cop in the nose. Blood blossomed and the cop cursed, Harley scrambling away on hands and knees, crawling until she was at Joker's feet.

Joker grabbed a handful of golden hair and wrenched her head back, casually holding the gun on the cop to keep him from getting up to any  _funny business_.

"He, uh, kiss you?" Joker asked Harley.

She glared at him, those eyes glinting like his favorite knife. "No,  _puddin_ '," she spat.

Joker leaned down and pulled Harley up by her hair, mashing their mouths together with a clack of teeth and spit like acid. She bit one of his scars, and he shook her, forcing her head to the side so he could whisper in her ear. "Goooo _ **d**_."

He let her hair go and grabbed her left hand, levering her to her feet. Then he dragged her over to the cop, who had wisely stayed on the floor, nursing his bloody nose and his equally bloody shoulder. Joker paused to give the guy a once over - middle aged, hair graying, in pretty decent shape, knife still in his shoulder, covered in blood and going an interesting shade of green-grey.

"You look terrible," Joker said, kneeling to prod the knife handle with the barrel of his stolen gun. He pulled Harley down with him, and her body against his side reminded him of why he'd brought her over. He brandished her hand at the cop, making her wedding rings catch the scant light that came in through the high warehouse windows. "You know what these are?"

The cop just stared at him, so Joker rolled his eyes. "Harley, my hands are a little, uh, full. You mind?"

She glanced at him with those wide, wide porcelain doll eyes. He jerked his head at the cop's shoulder. Harley blinked, swallowing convulsively and licking at her lips. Joker tongued his scars.

Harley used her right hand to twist the knife.

The cop gasped and paled, retching.

"Not on the shoes!" Joker protested. Then, when the cop kept whining. "Shshshshsh. Shshshshsh."

He glanced at Harley, and she got the message this time, reaching for the knife again.

"No!" the cop moaned, his voice breaking. "What do you want?"

" _I want!_ " Joker shouted, shaking Harley's left hand in the cop's face. In a quieter tone, "I want to know what these are."

The cop's eyes were starting to glaze. "Wedding rings?"

"That's riiiiiight!" Joker smiled. "Uh, tell me, Officer…?"

"Smith."

Harley snorted and Joker smirked at her, mouthing the name.  _Smith_.

"Tell me, Officer  _Smith_ , do you make a habit of touching other men's, hmmm, proper _ **t**_ _y_?"

"I didn't know."

" _I didn't know_ ," Harley mimicked in a high pitched voice, lips twisted in a sneer. Her eyes were cold, and Joker thought that if he could love anyone, if he was going to love anyone, he would love her like this, when she was the most like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

Joker winked. "You wanna twist the knife again, doll?"

She blanched, cold eyes gone, replaced by unshed tears. She wouldn't look at Joker. She looked at the floor. What was so interesting about the floor?

"You're the Joker," Officer Smith gasped, his voice thick and nasally, clotted with blood.

"Yeah," Joker said, his gaze still focused on Harley.  _Look at me. Look at me. Look at me look at me lookatme lookatme_  "Look at me, look at me.  _Look. At. Me!_ "

His voice echoed off the warehouse walls, filling the air, painting it red, and black, and white, like the makeup that he still didn't wear. Harley looked at him.

Joker smiled, and Harley smiled back, her cheeks trembling, tears leaking from her eyes. She kissed him, and it was gentle and sweet. Peaches and lip gloss. She nibbled his lips, and kissed his scars, nudged at his chin with her nose. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," she breathed.

"You scared of me, Harley?"

"No," Harley whispered. "I'm scared of  _me_."

Huh. She was a weird one sometimes, his Harley.

"You're crazy. You both are," Officer Smith wheezed. He tried to scoot away from them and Joker let go of Harley's hand to grab Officer Smith's shirt.

"Crazy? C _ **r**_ _a_ _ **a**_ zy?" Joker repeated, his full attention on Officer Smith once more. He pulled the guy close, tracing over the man's cheekbones with the barrel of his own gun. "You wanna talk about  _crazy_ , do you? Hmm, well, um, ah," he licked his lips, making a smacking sound. "Let's look at the fa _ **ct**_ s. You," he jabbed the gun barrel into Officer Smith's neck, "are one of the few cops still roaming the streets. You're double dealing, mhm, Commissioner Gordon and,  _and_  Bane, feeding misinformation and marking maps, because, because,  _ha_ , you  _really_  work for Boss Zucco."

He lowered the gun and let Officer Smith's shirt go, only to lurch forward and rip the knife out of his shoulder. Smith screamed, and Joker used the knife to cut Smith's shirt open, revealing a tattoo on Smith's chest that marked Smith as a member of the Maroni crime family. Joker quirked a brow.

"So," Joker went on. "You, ah, are playing triple agent, a, um,  _flea_  between bulldogs, and then,  _and then_! You. Touched. My. Woman." He backhanded Smith with the butt of the gun, finishing conversationally, "So who's really crazy here?"

"What do you want?" Smith whimpered, his eyes tearing. "Please, what do you want?"

Joker sighed. "I just want to know where Gordon's drop points are. The places he uses to send things to the cops, uh, tr _a_ _ **pp**_ _ed_  underground." He smiled. "I'm gonna send 'em some supplies."

"What," Smith scoffed, then coughed. "You on the side of the angels now?"

Joker barked a laugh. "Ha _ha_ hahahaha! Ha. Ha.  _Ha_. Hee. Aha. Ha." He looked at Harley. She was staring over Smith's shoulder, face blank, but when she sensed Joker's regard she turned a smile on him. He met her eyes.

"You ever dance with an angel in the pale moonlight?"

"No, Mister J," Harley answered. "That's what devils do."

Leaving Smith on the floor, Joker glided over to Harley, snaking an arm around her waist, spinning her around into a dip. Her hair streamed down in a golden river toward the floor, and she wrapped one of her long tan legs around his for balance, her gymnastic training lending her a grace that made the pose look like they'd practiced it dozens of times. Joker's knife left smears of blood on the back of her shirt. Her breasts were on display, almost spilling out of her tiny top. Joker buried his face in them and made motorboat noises.

"How can you work with him? How can you stand this? What kind of freak are you?" Smith prattled, and Joker realized the cop was talking to Harley.

"Better the devil you know!" Harley snarled, those cold eyes that Joker almost loved putting in another appearance. Then, more thoughtfully. "Plus, he's a hell of a dancer."

 


	5. PART V

Sixty-nine (hehe) days, give or take, after Bane sealed Gotham off, J came home to find that Harley had let  _people_  into the house. Quiet, quiet, like a mouse, he crept across the living room, pressing himself against the wall to one side of the kitchen doorway. He had a grenade in his pocket and knives up his sleeves, a gun in his waistband and a shiv in his sock. He listened.

A woman, not Harley, was speaking. "We ran out of food, and we can't find our son. There were all these gunshots and he got scared and ran off. I'm so worried I just… Have you seen him? He's ten years old, brown eyes, dark hair. His name is Jason. Jason Todd."

"Haven't seen him, sorry. My husband might have. I can ask, when he gets back."

"Oh… thank you. Um, are you sure my husband can't come in?"

"No," Harley's voice sounded like a gunshot. "I don't like men in the house when Mister J isn't here. I don't like  _anyone_  in the house when Mister J isn't here. I only let you in to make sure the guy you were with wasn't…"

"I understand. It's dangerous to be a woman alone. That's why Vicki started traveling with us."

A third female voice, this one deeper and more polished, clipped consonants and crisp vowels. "You keep mentioning your husband, this 'Mister J.' I can't help but notice that you glance at the door every time you do it. It almost seems like you're scared of him. Are you sure that you're not the one who needs rescuing?"

_Wham! Tinkle-crash!_

Did Harley just sweep the dishes off the table? Slam her hands down on the wood? Nothing sounded broken, so J only gave it a three out of ten.

"Don't you talk about Mister J," Harley ground out, low and venomous. "He saved me. More than once. He protects me, and if you're going to say a word against him while you eat the food that  _he_  got for me, you can get the fuck out of my house. In fact, do that."

Silence.

"Did you go deaf or somethin'? I said get the fuck out of my house! Right now!"

J smiled. Time to make an entrance.

He put a concerned pout on his face and stepped into the kitchen door. "Harley-pie?" he asked, low and wary.

"J!" she exclaimed, getting up so fast that she knocked over her chair, rushing forward to sling her arms around his neck. He didn't return the embrace, instead keeping his hands free and watching the two women sitting at the kitchen table.

"We have guests," he said. He could feel Harley's grimace against his skin. She was regretting whatever impulse had made her let these women in, and she'd broken a  _rule_ , earning herself both a punishment and a reward.

The women at the table were brunette, one tall and willowy, the other short and busty. They were both staring at him, the tall one horrified, the short one  _terrified_.

"It's the scars, right?" Joker said.

"You're supposed to be in Arkham!" the short busty one shrilled.

Joker squinted at her. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

"Vicki?" the tall one asked, voice wavering. "What's going on?"

"He's a killer! A mass murderer! A psychopath!"

Joker was bemused to see Harley spin and kick Vicki's chair out from under her. "Shut the fuck up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

The taller woman didn't make any move to help her friend. She just stared, eyes darting back and forth between Harley and Joker, like either one of them might spontaneously combust at any moment.

Joker took out his knife. Harley took a deep breath, her chest heaving.

"Leave. Now."

"H _arrrr_ ley," Joker rumbled her name. "Don't be rude." He spun the knife in his hand, limbering his wrist and letting the blade catch the light. "Our guests can't poss _i_ _ **b**_ ly leave now."

"No, that's okay. We'll leave," the seated woman said, voice barely above a whisper. "We'll go."

Joker pretended to consider. "Ummm. No."

Harley was between him and Vicki, so Joker went for the seated woman, wrapping a hand around her throat and shoving the blade of his knife against her mouth, using it to pry her lips open. "Hey, hey," he said when she struggled. He pressed the blade tighter. "You know, you really should smile more. All this frowning's giving you wrinkles."

"Oh god, he's the Joker. Oh god oh god oh god," Vicki sniveled.

Joker's head shot up at the sound of that voice saying his name. "Oh hey. I re _ **m**_ _e_ _ **m**_ ber  _you_. Vicki  _Vale_ , Gotham News. I used to watch you on TV." He turned his head to look down at her. "Thought you'd be taller."

Vicki sobbed in response. Bo _ring_.

"Just let 'em go, J. They're foulin' up the joint," Harley said with a hysterical giggle, her quick, panicked tone belying the casual words. And oh, but they were, they  _were_  fouling up the place. Joker was pretty sure his captive had just pissed herself.

Joker pulled the blade out of the woman's mouth and backhanded her, kicking her in the ribs when she fell to the kitchen floor.

"J! Don't!" Harley screamed.

Joker turned, slowly, slowly, to look at her. "Whhaaaa _ **t**_."

Harley swallowed, her eyes dancing and bouncing. She backed away, toward the corner where she kept her baseball bat. "I just m-meant…" She swallowed. Then, stronger, "I meant at least put a tarp down first. I just mopped yesterday."

Oh she was  _smart_ , his Ha-ha-hee-hoo-ha-Harley.

He smiled and smiled, flipping his knife in his hand. Hilt first, he offered it to Harley. "You broke the  _ **r**_ ule, doll. The, uh,  _mess_  is yours to clean up."

Harley sucked in a breath. "N-no," she stuttered. "That's not our deal. I'm the housewife, remember? I'm the wife, the fuck doll, this isn't my job.  _This isn't my job_."

Joker smacked his lips and tongued his scars. Crossing the kitchen (pardon me, Vicki), he grabbed Harley's hands, ignoring the way she slapped at his arms, and forced the knife into her fingers. Wrapping his own hand around hers, he squeezed, pressing the handle into her skin. She convulsed like he'd heated it first, like it was burning a mark there. And hey! There was an idea!

"Killing," he whispered in Harley's ear, the point of the knife against his chest, "is a choi _ **c**_ e. And right now, the choice is them or, ah," he snapped his teeth, "us."

Mutely, Harley shook her head. She smelled like salt and peaches. Joker licked away a tear coursing down her cheek.

"Shshshsh. You know the truth, Har _ley_. They've seen what we have, and they'll tell others, they'll tell the other  _animals_ , the other dogs, and then… Hahahahee hoo. Aha. Hahe. Ha.  _This is why we can't have nice things._ "

There was a flurry of movement out of the corner of Joker's eye, and he turned just in time for Vicki Vale to break a chair on his head. Things got fuzzy after that, his vision spotty, a red haze around the world. He struck out with hands and feet, his ears ringing with Harley's cry of "J!"

He tripped in something slippery, warm and wet, and oh,  _there_  was that crimson sea. He rolled in it, his shoes sliding, and wondered where Harley kept the floor wax. He missed the squeak.

A leg appeared beside his face, and  _oh_  he was on the floor. He grabbed the leg, pulling its owner down to his level, and it was the other brunette. Not-Vicki. Joker clawed his way up her body and strangled her to death, his hands imprinted on her for all time.

He sat up, pushing his hair back out of his eyes, and there was sweet, sweet Harley-pie, her face and chest spattered with blood like confetti, sitting on top of Vicki Vale's corpse. The knife was buried in Vicki's neck, not a slash, but a stab. Harley stared down at Vicki's unblinking eyes, enthralled.

Then she doubled over and threw up on the tiles next to Vicki's head.

Really, and she worried about him making a mess.

**-l-**

J took care of the bodies, and Harley mopped the kitchen floor. She even waxed it, when J asked, so that his boots could make that delightful squeak-squeak. He took full advantage, squeaking and sliding back and forth, giggling to himself and eating chocolate covered coffee beans. Harley went off to do whatever it was she did when she wasn't with J. (Half the time he was convinced that she didn't exist when he wasn't thinking about her, like a character in a story.)

He spent some time in Dead Jimmy's basement, where he'd set up a little lab of sorts. A place to keep his projects. Poisons, gas, bombs, surgical equipment - he had it all. He coulda been a doc, a  _doc_ , if it wasn't  _so_  boring. Actually, he thought he might have been a doc once. (Or a crook, a comedian, a gangster, a spy.) He remembered it different ways on different days.

It was either twilight or dawn (who could keep up?) when he went back over to 13B. He needed to piss, and shave, and bathe, and he didn't smell pancakes. He should smell pancakes.

The shower was running when he opened the bathroom door. He took a piss and flushed, making a mischievous face, waiting for Harley to yelp at the sudden cold.

She didn't. Hm.

J pulled the shower curtain back and found Harley sitting in the tub, knees to her chest, her lips turning blue. "You used all the hot water," he complained.

Harley didn't answer. J turned the water off so that there'd be some that was warm eventually, and then he looked down at Harley. When it was wet, her hair looked honey brown, like roasted nuts.  _Out damned spot! Out, I say!_

"Hey, listen. When you're done doing," J paused, waving a hand, a gesture that encompassed Harley and the bathroom and the world, " _this_ , I want pancakes."

Harley still didn't answer, so J slapped her.

"Ow," she complained in a small voice. Poor  _little_  dolly.

J sighed. "Whatever."

He wandered off and got his cards, settling down on the squashy red couch to think big thoughts, make big plans, add little, heh,  _wild_  cards to the game Batman and Bane were playing. Just to keep things fresh.

**-l-**

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up to the sound of someone hammering at the door. A man was shouting like a mad thing, a mad,  _dying_  thing, and glass shattered as something slammed into the front window that J had boarded up weeks ago.

J stretched, knocking Harley off the couch where she'd curled up next to him. "Where's my gun?" he mumbled, groggy. "Harley, where's, where's my gun?"

"Your pants from yesterday," she answered from her new spot on the floor by the coffee table.

"No, not  _that_  one." J sat up and scratched his chest, pushing his lengthening hair out of his eyes. It was stiff with dried blood, because  _somebody_  had used all the hot water. "The one with the thing. Uh, you know. The big one."

The pounding outside got louder, fists on the door. "Where's my wife?! Where is she?! Let her out! Let me see her!"

"Look in the couch cushions, puddin'."

"Mm!" he pointed at Harley,  _good dolly, good girl_ , and stuck his hands into the depths of the couch. Nope, nope, nope, but oh hey, there was the remote. Now they could finish watching  _The Walking Dead_. (It was baffling, hi _ **l**_ _a_ _ **r**_ ious, that shows that were meant to be fictional were more real than reality. Really, people were  _such_ liars.)

"Hold your horses," he muttered in response to the front door rattling. Pushing himself onto his bare feet, he ambled over to the bookshelf and got the sawed off shotgun they kept hidden between it and the wall. Wasn't his favorite gun, but oh well. Didn't matter.

"That's probably Mr. Todd," Harley said flatly. She squeezed herself underneath the coffee table, belly scraping on the ground.

J quirked a brow. "The demon barber of Fleet Street?"

"I hope not. This street's got all the knife wielding demon it can handle. Wouldn't you say, Mister J?"

Joker smiled. "Oh,  _wouldn't_  I."

He  _liked_  Harley.

There was a pause in the knocking. Joker slammed the door open and blew Mr. Todd's brains out.


	6. PART VI

Harley was in the bathroom again. J was debating whether he should toss her out on her ass or take the opportunity to have a  _slice_  of Harley-pie. He opened the door.

Harley was reclined in the tub (no water, wearing clothes), a knife in her hands (her knife now, the one that killed Vicki) and cuts on her arms. Well now,  _well_  now. That looked like fun. Like  _art_ , cracks spider-webbing across porcelain, white skin leaking the black and red inside.

Vaulting over the side of the tub, J arranged himself across from Harley. The tub was cramped with the two of them in it, J's legs splayed everywhere, one foot dangling over the tub's edge.

He pulled out his switchblade,  _the_ switchblade, the key that led to Harleytown, and carved a jagged 'J' into the sole of Harley's left foot. (When he was a boy, he wrote his name on the bottom of all his favorite toys. Or maybe he just saw that in a movie.) She barely shuddered, barely squawked. She was tough, his Harley.

He looked up to see her expression, smacking his lips. Harley's face was white and pinched, and the very air she exhaled tasted of misery. J  _savored_  it, tasting, testing, but Harley's face was made for smiling. "Why so serious?" he asked.

Harley flinched, and looked down at her arms, at all the cuts she had given herself. J had to admit, they were a bit crude. Harley hadn't developed the  _skill_ with a blade, the  _finesse_  to do better. But she was still learning. J would teach her.

"I can fix those," he promised his Harley-pie. Then, with quick flicks of his switchblade, he made new cuts,  _more_ , connecting all the rent places in Harley's skin until her arms spelled out  _Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha_  over and over and over. Sleeves of red laughter.  _S-laughter_. Joker grinned.

Harley looked up, and she was smiling too. "Thanks, Mister J," she said.

Then she slit her wrists.

J leaned back, the bathtub faucet digging uncomfortably into his spine. "Now why did you do that," he mused aloud.

"I think that should be obvious to a smart guy like you," Harley said, her lips barely moving. She tilted her head, her knife falling from her hands with a clatter. Blood ran down her arms in steady pulses, pooling between them.

J frowned. "You don't want to die, Harley-pie."

She didn't. She did. not. She was smart, his Harley. She knew the best way to cut her wrists to bleed out quickly, and she'd done it  _wrong_. She'd done it in front of him, knowing he might stop her if the mood struck. And oh, the mood  _had_  struck, it was  _striking_.

"Yes I do." Harley argued, lower lip stuck out stubbornly. J leaned forward again so he could nibble on it.

"You  _deserve_  to die," he said into her mouth, tongue chasing the flavor of peaches and metal. "But you don't  _want_  to."

Harley headbutted him and Joker saw stars. With a roar of outrage he slammed her into the wall, his grip on his knife blood slick as he jabbed the point under her ear. She struggled in his grasp, her shoulders jerking, head hitting the wall again with a wet thud.

"Come on!" she screamed, voice hoarse and breaking, eyes wide and unseeing. Her thrashing got weaker as more blood pulsed from her veins. "Come  _on_! I want you to do it. I want you to do it, I want you to do it, I want it, I want you do it, Iwantyoutodoit, IwantyoutodoitIwantyoutodoit, kill me kill me kill me  _kill me_!"

Joker paused. He'd made a promise, and his promises  _meant_  something.

He grabbed Harley's face and put a finger to her lips. "No. It's like I told you when we met. I'm a man of my word."

He kissed her.

Then he knocked her out and tied towels around her wrists.

Her head lolled as he gathered her up in his arms. Thanks to Harley's obsession with medicine and  _preparing ahead_ , (she was a sur _vi_ vor, his Harley) he had everything he needed to fix her up in Dead Jimmy's basement. He'd sew up her wrists and give her some blood, just as good as any doc.

With a skip in his step that jostled the body in his arms, making Harley's limp feet tap-tap, he set off for the basement, singing a jaunty tune as he went.

"Harley-Darley sat in a tub,

Harley-Darley's covered in blood,

Despite her intentions,

Life down the drain,

Joker'll put Harley together again.

Harley-Darley came apart at the seams,

Harley-Darley has beautiful screams,

A couple of stitches,

New porcelain skin,

And when she wakes up she's Harley Quinn."

**-l-**

"I hate you," Harley whispered, when she awoke to find herself alive and bandaged and tucked into bed. J was lying next to her, the both of them staring straight up into the darkness.

"Don't ever, uh, do that again. Not. Ever. You're not, it's not  _allowed_."

"Why?"

J pressed his lips together, squinching his eyes shut in disgust. Harley knew better that to ask him  _why_ , like it mattered, like he didn't just.  _Do. Things_.

"I love you, Harley."

He waited, blinking in the dark.

" _No. Lies_ ," Harley growled.

Joker grinned. "I  _own_  you, Harley."

She cried until she laughed, and then she cried again.

 


	7. PART VII

"Teach me to fight," Harley demanded.

Joker said, "Uh, okay," and punched her in the gut.

**-l-**

She learned fast after that first day. Harley was already strong, already agile and quick, her body honed by years of gymnastics. She just had to decide she wasn't helpless, let go of her notions of  _right_  and  _wrong_  and be ready to hur _ **t**_ , to brea _ **k**_ , to ha _ **t**_ e, to  _kill_.

Like J said, she picked that up fast.

It would take more time than they had for her to get good with the knives, for her to be able to win that  _close_ , but she was a whirling dervish with her baseball bat and a fallen angel of death with a sledgehammer swinging around her head. She darted in and out, dealing blows and cartwheeling away before anyone (J) could get their hands on her.

And Joker liked  _fight_  in his women, he liked it, liked it  _a lot_ , and so the better Harley got, the more able to hold her own, the b _ **l**_ _u_ er his balls, until he ended every session by fucking her into the ground.

**-l-**

"Over halfway to boom time," Harley said, lying naked and sweaty on top of J.

"Yep," he confirmed, tracing the shiny pink scars of laughter on her arms with his fingertips.  _Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha._ Harley latched onto his throat with her teeth, working her jaw like she'd like to rip it out. J groaned and smacked her ass with both hands, a full round cheek in each palm.

"Want some coffee?" Harley asked, her lips stained red with his blood.

"Yeah."

She got up, leaving J in bed. He stretched and tongued his scars.

His coffee had a metallic aftertaste. It had for a while now. J figured things were going further to hell - the longer Gotham was cut off from the rest of the world the dirtier the water got, the scarcer the food, the meaner the people. They still had running water, but their electricity only worked thanks to the generator and buckets of fuel in Dead Jimmy's basement.

"You hungry?" Harley asked.

"No," J groused. He loved to eat, loved sweet things and spicy things, but he hadn't had much of an appetite lately, and he was starting to get a headache between his eyes. His toes tingled. Then his lips.

"Harley," he said, feeling confused. Confusion like a blow.

She looked at him, and there was a grin stretching her lips and that cold look in her eyes, that look he almost loved, like gunmetal, and he knew, he  _knew_ …

His body seized.

**-l-**

He floated in a grey fog for a while, and when his vision came back in shades of red, and black, and white, Harley was giving him a sponge bath.

"Hell _ooo_  nurse," he croaked through a throat that felt swollen, like rusty nails grating on a chalkboard.

"How you feelin', Mister J?" she asked, and there was something there like glee.

"You did this. You, uh,  _poi_ soned me."

She nodded. "Lead shavings in your coffee for days and days. I was wondering how much longer it would be."

He ran his tongue over his lips and Harley offered him a glass of water. He eyed her suspiciously. She giggled. "Lead free. I promise."

He sipped.

Harley put the glass down and J grabbed at her, frustrated by the weakness in his limbs. He got a hand around her elbow, but she broke his grip easily, pushing him back against the pillows.

"I'm still alive," he pointed out. "What's the matter? You lose your  _nerve_  at the last minute?"

Harley stroked his hair, looking thoughtful. "Nah, I didn't mean to kill you. Not really. I just wanted you to know that I could if I wanted."

" _Why_?" Joker demanded, because it  _mattered_ ,  _oh_ , it  _ma_ _ **t**_ _t_ e _ **r**_ e _ **d**_.

"Why what?"

Joker grit his teeth. " _Whhhhy..._ not kill me?"

Harley bit her lip. "Because you're all I got, J. Without you, I'm all alone."

Joker laughed. He laughed so hard that it hurt his abused trachea, he laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks, he laughed until he had to clutch at his sides, because oh,  _oh,_ he couldn't kill Harley, he'd promised he wouldn't, and she  _wouldn't_  kill him because he  _completed_  her.  _He was just too much fun_. A reversal of the roles he and Batman held, except, except...

Harley might really kill him one day, and that just made the game that much better. Bats never would, but Harley! Oh, Harley, Harley,  _Harley_. Sometimes he thought he really did love her. She was his, she  _was_ , and wasn't possession nine-tenths of love?

Or some word that started with 'L' anyway.

**-l-**

Time marched on, as it was wont to do, and the streets got harder, and the nights got darker, and J decided it was time to expand his little kingdom. He and Harley went door to door, scavenging and looting, introducing themselves as the Queen and Clown of the neighborhood, and when they were done they painted a bright red boundary line all the way around and made a sign that said  _Welcome to Harleytown_.

"We need more guards," Harley said, wielding her paintbrush with a flourish. She did a pirouette into his arms, smiling up at him and cupping his cheek in her hand. J dropped her just to see her smack into the pavement, and they both laughed.

"We'll take over the Maroni family," J promised her, skipping back a step when she tried to kick his knee.

Harley shook her head. "No,  _I'll_  take over the Maroni family.  _You're_  just my enforcer. This is  _Harley_ town, after all." She winked at him. "Never play it straight, Mister J, except for when crooked's what they expect."

Joker hauled Harley up by her throat, squeezing, making her gasp for breath. Then he laughed and spun her around. "Harley!  _Doll_!" He kissed her. "I lo _vvv_ e the way your mind, uh, works."

**-l-**

Harley burst into an uptown brownstone, interrupting three men who were drinking whiskey and playing cards. She was wearing a black halter top and torn blue jeans, steel capped boots on her feet and her baseball bat slung across her back like a sword.

Joker watched from the shadows, waiting. (He really was the  _Bat_  in this partnership, hahahahee ahoohehaha!)

The three men turned, reaching for weapons, but they were deterred by the Kalashnikov Harley held in her dainty little hands.

"Hey boys," she said brightly, in a high, bubbly voice. "I'm lookin' for Boss Zucco. You seen him?"

"That gun looks too big for you, little girl. Why don't you put it down before your arms get tired."

Harley giggled. "And then you three will give me all the  _help_  I need, right? I don't think so. My boyfriend's the jealous type." She shot up the ground in front of their feet. "Which one of you is Zucco?"

"How'd you get past the guards?"

"Oh, them? You'd be surprised how easy it is to lure men into dark alleys when you've got tits like mine." She ran one hand over her breasts, pinching a nipple and winking. Joker got hard.

Two of the men rushed her. (Idiots. Now it was obvious which one was Zucco.) Harley shot the guy on her left, but she couldn't swing the gun around fast enough to take care of the guy on the right. The guy wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up off her feet. Harley went limp, forcing the guy to either hold all of her weight, or drop her. The guy held on. (Harley could have broken his hold easily, could have somersaulted away, twisted herself like a pretzel, but that wasn't the  _plan_ , it  _wasn't_.)

"Well now," Zucco said, standing and approaching Harley. He reached out and curled a strand of Harley's hair around his fingers, and Joker decided that he was going to break them. "Miss…?

"Harley. Harley Quinn."

Zucco's brows rose. "You'll die for this, Miss Quinn. But I think my men and I will have some fun with you first."

Harley started to giggle, then laugh, then howl, mouth stretched wide.

Zucco backhanded her, splitting her lip. "What's so funny, bitch?"

"I know something you don't know," Harley singsonged.

"Yeah? Well you better start talking if you want to keep that pretty face in one piece."

Harley snorted. "You already said you're going to kill me." Zucco raised his hand to hit her again. "Ah ah ah, I never said I wouldn't tell you. That's the point." She made a show of looking back and forth, like she was about to impart a secret. "See, the thing is," she stage whispered. "I didn't come here alone. I brought my dog."

Zucco's brow furrowed in confusion. With a look that was positively  _feral_ , Harley yelled, "Sic 'em, boy!"

Joker sicced.

**-l-**

When they got back to Harleytown (with the guards Harley wanted plus a trunkload of guns), there was a woman and a boy waiting for them on their porch. J went up the stairs first, Harley a half-step behind him.

The woman was one of the neighborhood's original residents. They let her stay, let her  _keep breathing,_  so long as she acted as a lookout. When J and Harley approached, the woman bowed her head, her eyes averted. Roughly, she grabbed the boy - a bony, weedy thing with dark hair and dark eyes that watched J defiantly - and pushed him forward.

"I found him sniffing around the town line," the woman said. J thought her name might be something like Sarah or Cynthia, but whatever, didn't matter. "Thought he might be trying to steal from us." Joker cut his eyes at Sarah-or-Cynthia and she hastily corrected herself, "Thought he might be trying to steal from  _you_. So I brought him here."

J flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture and Harley said, "You can go."

Sarah-slash-Cynthia left as fast as she could without running. J smirked and Harley clapped her hands.

J knelt in front of the kid, grabbing his face and squishing his cheeks. Wasn't that what you were supposed to do to children?

"Hey. Look at me, look at me." The kid looked at him. "You gonna steal from me?"

The kid didn't answer, his eyes roaming over J's face. "Cool scars," he said. "Can I touch 'em?"

J raised both his brows, exchanging an incredulous look with Harley.

The kid ran his fingers over J's scars, pinching and pulling J's cheeks. J mimicked the motions with the kid's own face, and they took turns forcing each other into grotesque expressions.

"Want some scars of your own?" J asked the kid.

"Not yet, Mister J!" Harley yelped, speaking so fast that her words tumbled over each other. "We'll wait 'til he's older. That'll be better, right? He'll be much, much more useful, sneakier, while he's little and cute if no one knows he's ours."

"Ours?"

J let the kid's face go and turned to look at Harley. She was smiling, manic, eyes like glass. Her hands clenched and unclenched, skipping up and down. Frightened  _bunnies_ , trapped  _birdies_. Such  _skittish_  hands, Harley had.

"Well, yeah," Harley went on, and she was using that high airy voice, the one that made her sound stupid, but she was  _smart_ , his Harley, and J never forgot it. "I mean how great would that be? People never think kids know anything, never think kids are dangerous. So we keep this one and train him up, and we play bloody jokes, and when we bite the big one, he takes over, yeah? We already know he's got guts. He was going to steal from us."

Joker considered.

Joker smiled. "Congratulations, dollface. It's a boy."

Harley squealed and threw her arms around him, then pulled the kid into the hug. Joker rolled his eyes and the kid mimicked him.

"Hey, uh,  _ **J**_ unior. What's your name?"

"Jason," the kid said. "Jason Todd."

Harley gasped. Shoving away from them, she scampered over to the porch railing, bending over it and barfing with a sudden violent hacking sound.

"Don't mind her," J told Jason. "She can be a little, uh, mm,  _strange_."

Jason shrugged. "Can I have something to eat?"

"Come with me, Little J," Harley said, coming up for air, face red and eyes streaming, snot leaking from her nose. "Mama will make you some dinner."

"See what you mean," Jason murmured to J, following Harley inside.


	8. PART VIII

"How'd you get those scars?" Jason asked over pancakes. He was talking to Harley, not J. J sprayed more whipped cream (straight from the can, mmm, that's the stuff) on his pancakes and watched Harley. Harley saw him watching.

"There's a crocodile in the sewers. It chomped on me but good," Harley said.

"I don't believe you."

J snorted. "Smart boy."

Harley frowned at him. "Just like his father, right  _puddin_ '?"

J shoved a whole pancake in his mouth and wrinkled his nose.

"These," Harley said to Jason, running a palm over the raised pink  _Ha Ha Ha Has_  on her arms and the thicker lines of scar tissue at her wrists, "Mister J and I did together. I was sad and trying to bleed it out, and Mister J helped me see the funny side of life. But this," she hiked her leg up onto the table, wiggling her toes. For a second J thought she was showing off the cracked red nail polish, but no, she was pointing at the jagged scar in the shape of a 'J.' (Oh yeah, that's right. He'd forgotten about that.)

"This was a gift from your Daddy J. I take his name with me wherever I go, that's how much he cares about me. And if you're good, Little J, if you're very very good and do whatever,  _everything_  that Daddy J says, maybe one day he'll care that much about you too. But you have to do whatever he says, no matter what it is. Whatever he says.  _Always_. Do you understand?"

Jason nodded and glanced at J. J made a face that said  _Told you she's weird_ , and Jason snickered. "I understand, Mama Harley."

**-l-**

J came in from Dead Jimmy's basement to find the downstairs of 13B abandoned. He blinked and checked the time.  _Ah_.

Going up the staircase, he sat against the bedroom door and listened to Harley tuck Jason in. She insisted on trying to give him a  _normal_  childhood, on the days that she remembered. (Or were they the days J remembered to check on them?)

" _Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you._ "

"Mama?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"Is… Is this book about you and Daddy J?"

A strangled laugh. "You think Daddy J is a sparkly vampire like Edward Cullen?"

"No. Vampires aren't real." A pause. "Are they?"

"No, Little J. As far as I know, vampires aren't real. But I can see how you might think this book is about us. It's kind of similar, huh? Edward, he's, he's a  _monster_ , but he can't help it, and Bella just wants to be special, for  _once_  in her life, and and  _and_  -" Harley gasped for air.

"It said 'soles of my feet,'" Jason's voice sounded clear and pure over Harley's shuddered breaths. "It made me think of your scar, the one on your foot. The one Daddy J gave you because he loves you."

 _I_ _ **own**_   _you, Harley-pie._

"Yeah," Harley said. "Yeah. Daddy J loves me. And I love him too."

"How's the story end? I don't want to sit through all the mushy parts."

Harley laughed, a throaty chuckle that sounded lighter than before. "Well, there's more books.  _Twilight_  is just the first one. But if you really want to know, in the last one… in the last one, Bella becomes a vampire, a monster just like Edward, and she does it because she wants to. Because she was born to be a vampire." Softly, forlornly, "She was one all along."

The sound of rustling covers and a book being set on the bedside table, Harley's lips smacking against Jason's forehead. "Be a good boy and go to sleep now."

Footsteps coming toward the door.

"Mama Harley?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"Do you think Batman is going to keep the bomb from going off? Daddy J says he will."

Silence. Then, "Well if Daddy J said it, then it must be true. So yeah, Batman'll stop the bomb. But it doesn't really matter. He can't keep us all from dying. He'll just be adding days to the deadline."

**-l-**

J grabbed Harley around the waist, flipping her skirt up and reaching down to push her panties to the side.

"Puddin'," she panted into his mouth, "not in front of Little J."

J looked over his shoulder. Jason was standing there, head tilted to the side as he watched them. "Whatcha doin'?" the kid asked.

"Yo Mama," J replied.

" _Puddin_ '!" Harley snapped, pulling a knife and jabbing him in the side, just a prick to let him know she meant business. J got harder, his eyes rolling back in his head. Mmm, that's the stuff.

One arm still holding Harley in place, he fished around the pockets of his discarded suit jacket and found a canister of tear gas and a snub nosed pistol. He sent both skidding across the floor in Jason's direction. "Here kid. Go play with these. Start a, uh, start a gang or something. Go on.  _Shoo_."

Jason grabbed up his new toys and skedaddled. J promptly forgot all about him.

**-l-**

A few days later (or maybe a week. Who could tell?), there were extra children at 3 AM dinner.

"Har _leeeey_!" J screamed, because criminy fuckery, they weren't running an orphanage. He wasn't Fagin. (Though he could be if he wanted to. He was good with kids.)

He could hear Harley's feet go pitter patter, but before she got there, Jason spoke up.

"Don't worry, Daddy J. They're with me."

J stared him down. "Wha _ **t**_."

Jason didn't flinch. "You told me to start a gang."

"Huh." J blinked. "So I did. So. I. Did."

**-l-**

Jason was sitting on the porch steps when J emerged from the night, back from seeing to the details of one of his many games. Jason caught sight of him, huddling into himself and hiding his face when J approached.

"You crying?" J asked, sitting on the steps next to Jason and thunking his duffle bag full of explosives down at his feet.

Jason scrubbed at his face. "Sorry. Didn't mean to."

J pinched Jason's cheeks, forcing his mouth into a jester's grin. "What's eatin' you?" he asked.

Jason pulled back, running his tongue over his lips. J licked his scars.

"Doesn't matter," Jason said, and J was proud.

"No," J confirmed. "No. It. Does. No _ **t**_." He cocked his head. "Wanna go to the zoo?"

Jason's eyes lit up.

**-l-**

The animals hadn't been fed in who  _knows_  how long. The ones that were still alive were  _rabid_ , starving _, raving_. Joker and Harley set explosives on the gates and let Jason flip the detonator switch, releasing the beasts into the city.

Joker cackled at the tigers, Little J threw rocks at the rhinos, and Harley, Harley made sure the hyenas went west, harrying them with bullets and smoke bombs.

Joker raised a brow.

Harley bared her teeth at him, her eyes cold and lovely. "Let's just say that there are some creeps out that way who deserve to be eaten by jackals."

_Mister J. Wanna know how I got these scars?_


	9. PART IX

_Love is not only the story of butterflies or birds; it is also the story of jackals and hounds._

D-Day came, the day of the big boom, and J and Harley got up early. They sent Jason to the basement with his gang of pipsqueaks (Do whatever you want, Little J, have a good time, throw yourself a party), and then they fucked in the shower.

_It soon became clear to me the Joker, so often described as a raving, homicidal madman... was actually a tortured soul crying out for love and acceptance. A lost, injured child trying to make the world laugh at his antics._

When they were done, J wiped steam off the mirror and Harley set three rounds of plastic down on top of the toilet with a soft  _tink tink tink_. Grease paint, war paint, white, black and red.

Joker put it on.

_Humor is reason gone mad._

When he was done it was time for the suit.  _The_  suit, royal purple and green. Vest, shirt, cufflinks, shoes. No more hiding, no more shadows, Joker cards in his pocket,  _Here I am, Bats!_

_Every fairytale needs a good old-fashioned villain. You need me or you're nothing. Because we're just alike, you and I, except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels._

Harley smiled, and she painted her face too. White, while Joker watched, not as thick as his. Black around her eyes, making them look like bullets, cold shards of metal stuck in a wound, seared in a pit. Red on her lips, cupid's bow mouth.

It was too neat, so he kissed her.

_I want to get a vending machine, with fun sized candy bars, and the glass in front is a magnifying glass. You'll be mad, but it will be too late_ _._

She wore a white dress with ruffles and frills, his perfect little dolly. Gold hair in pigtails and a wide red belt, matching red tights and little boots with bells. She looked so  _sweet_ , if you didn't know about the knives in her garters, didn't mind the sledgehammer strapped to her back.

"Let's go, puddin'."

_I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you're stupid. I think you're a loser. I think you're wonderful. I want to be with you. I don't want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand. Did you have a disease or something?_

Up, up, up to a skyscraper roof. Joker brought the police scanner, and Harley brought a picnic. They ate finger sandwiches while the police scanner sputtered, drank champagne with frozen strawberries while the Batman's plane-thing careened through the sky.

It was time to watch the world burn.

_There's a hole in the world like a great black pit,_

_And the vermin of the world inhabit it,_

_And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit,_

_And it goes by the name of_

"Gotham." Gunfire sounded and tires squealed. "Ain't it pretty?"

"And what are we doing up here, Harley-mine?"

"Killing time, Mister J. We're killing time 'til the end of the world. Killing time forever, just you and me."

"That's right."

_There is the love that I love but don't want to love and try to bleed out so the love that I want but don't want can die a tragic death. And as it lays dying, I'm touched with remorse, feel regret, and try to keep it beating. If it does, I panic, and go through the cycle all over again. What do you call that except pure madness? I'm a catastrophic tsunami on any man who tries to love me. And if I really care about a man, you would think I would be sweet and supportive, but instead I set fires and dare them to walk through them._

The bomb exploded over the bay, turning the Batman into paste, and the Joker and the Harlequin danced, and laughed, silhouettes against a wall of flame.

_They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them._

"Sayonara, Batsy. Don't worry. We'll watch the city for ya. We'll keep the people happy."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quotes in this chapter are, in order: M.F. Moonzajer; Harley Quinn (Mad Love); Groucho Marx; Moriarty (Sherlock); Mitch Hedberg; Shannon L. Alder; Sweeney Todd (Sweeney Todd); Donna Lynn Hope; Douglas MacArthur.


	10. PART X - EPILOGUE

"Good Evening, Gothamites. I'm Charlotte Rivers for Gotham News and on this, the one year anniversary of the Batman's sacrifice to save us all, we are looking back over the years of his service to our fair city. At the end of this segment we will be showing you some never before seen footage of the new Batman who has so recently taken up our hero's mantle-"

A band of static went over the television screen, and Jim Gordon frowned. The little set he had in his office was old, but it had never given out on him before. He smacked the casing in hopes of shaking any loose wires back into place.

The picture cleared, but it wasn't the Gotham News. Instead, the camera bobbed and weaved, a familiar laugh that Jim still had nightmares about coming through the speakers.

A man in a Batman suit was chained to a chair, glaring sullenly at the camera.

"Go on, Little J, you can do it," a woman's voice said.

Someone stepped into the frame, and  _Jesus Christ_ , that was a  _kid_. A kid wearing a leather jacket and jeans, with a red hood that covered everything but his eyes hiding his face. He turned toward the camera, just for a second, and Jim could read his t-shirt. It said  _Keep Calm and Party On_.

"Are you the real Batman?" the kid asked in a register that hadn't yet seen puberty. To Jim it sounded like his son, little boy voice warbling as he said,  _Is there a Santa Claus?_

And then the kid pulled a knife and cut the Batman's face, just below the line of his cowl.

The Batman stayed silent. Jim didn't know whether to pray that it was the real one, or hope that it wasn't.

The camera fell sideways and the Joker danced into view, delivering a punch to the Batman's jaw that was loud enough for the microphones to pick up. "Hahahahahaha hoooheehahaha!"

"Are you the real Batman?" the kid asked again.

Someone picked up the camera and the same woman's voice sighed, "I just love home movies."

Shaking himself out of a shocked stupor, Jim ran for his door, shouting into the bullpen. "Where's Blake?! John Blake! Someone call Blake in! And trace this video feed!"

"What are you talking about, Commissioner?"

"The Joker. The Joker's back."

On the little TV screen in Jim's office, the kid in the red hood was torturing the Batman while the Joker looked on, his arm around a woman who wore the same kind of face paint.

"Oh, Harley-pie," the Joker said. "They grow up so fast."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who followed the story for your reviews and patience! I had a blast, and hope you did too.


End file.
